Cry, Silent Hill
by Robt. A Myers
Summary: The nightmarish town of Silent Hill may have bitten off more than even it can chew when cocky devil hunters Dante and Lady pay a visit. Crossover with the movie.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

_Drdrdringggggg! Drdrdringggggg!_

"Devil May Cry ..."

"Hello, um, hi... I'd like to speak to Dante?"

"You got him. You got the password too?"

"Yes! Uh, I mean, I need to talk to the 'handyman that will take any dirty job.' That's it, right?"

"More or less. What's the problem, and how much money you got?"

_Thump!_

Dante glanced at his partner Lady, a pretty brunette with mismatched eyes in a white bell-bottomed catsuit perched on the edge of his desk, which she had just kicked. She was fixing him with a "be nice!" glare around a mouthful of pizza. He waved her off, leaned his chair back dangerously far, and picked his free ear with a pinky.

"It's my wife, and my daughter," the caller explained, "They've vanished ..."

"I don't do missing persons, pal," Dante cut him off as he examined the tip of his finger before wiping it on his red leather jeans. Lady made a face.

"... into a place called Silent Hill. Wait, let me finish." The caller took a shaky breath, "I'm in the next town over, place named Braham, and everyone here says that that place is, uh, you know ..."

Dante dropped his feet from the desk and waved Lady over. Grabbing a slip of paper and a pencil stub, he scrawled something down.

"No, actually, I don't know," Dante spun the slip of paper around and pushed it over to his partner. 'SILENT HILL?' it read. "Why don't you spell it out for me?"

She broke into a wide grin, scribbled something beneath Dante's question, and held the paper up for him.

'JACKPOT!'

The man on the other end of the line swallowed, "Haunted. They say it's haunted. I was there earlier today with the cops ..."

"Ok, Ok, I'll take your word for it," Dante grinned back at Lady, "You haven't told me how much you got though."

"They're my whole world, I'll pay whatever I can …" He paused, thinking, "I, uh, I can probably wire you about $15,000 tonight, and then call my bank on Monday to put in a transfer for, uh, another $85,000... And if that's not enough, I can mortgage ..."

"Nah, nah, that'll do. Don't worry about the up-front loot though. You pay when the job's done," Now Dante was getting bored, and met Lady's brown and blue eyes.

"Ask him ...," she began to whisper, but Dante cut her off by speaking into the phone.

"Work the details out with my partner," he flipped the handset over to Lady and stood, not looking to see that she caught it.

She did so, also without looking, and instead glared at Dante's back as he went to ponder the weapons cabinet.

"Hello, you can call me Lady. So why don't you start again from the top, Mr. ...?"

"Da Silva... you have no idea how frightening this is, having your family just disappear ..."

Lady swallowed, "You'd be surprised. Now what were they doing there?"

By the time Lady finished the call and hung up a half hour later, Dante had pulled five of his oversized magical weapons out of the cabinet (which Lady had carefully stored them in), felt their balance, checked them for wear, spun them on his fingertips, juggled them in groups of three, then finally stabbed the bladed ones into the wall next to the cabinet, and draped the flail and gauntlets over them. The only demonic armament (or "devil arm" as he called them) he didn't toy with was the glowing purple guitar called Nevan, which remained on its stand next to the drum kit, pulsing and sparking. Something singled it out for special treatment by its owner, and that made Lady uneasy.

Bored for the moment with his other toys, Dante was across the office, playing darts — which for him meant keeping his eyes closed, doing a handstand on one finger, and with a pizza crust sticking out of his mouth. A cluster of a dozen darts crowded the bull's eye, as he fished with his free hand in a box for another one.

The dart buried itself in the middle of the cluster with a 'THUNK!' as he gulped down the last bit of pizza.

"So this place, Silence Hill ..."

"Silent Hill," Lady corrected from her seat at the desk.

"... demon central? I figured, since you got that big shit-eating grin at the name. You been there?"

"No, not personally," Lady opened the desk and pulled out an atlas and a phone book. "But my father mentioned it several times. He visited it at least once, maybe more. I think he suspected it was one of the places where Temen-ni-Gru might manifest. The first time he went was right before he ... killed my mother."

She shook her head to clear the memory, and flipped through the atlas to the page on West Virginia.

"Here it, no... hm... It doesn't seem to be on the map. Oh, wait, here's the town our customer's staying in, Braham... but nope. No Silent Hill nearby. Well, I guess that's kind of good news, considering the type of place we'd expect. The customer, Da Silva, said it had been abandoned for years, something about a mine fire that was still going, and that it's been barricaded that whole time."

Turning upright in a flip, Dante landed next to the 'fridge in the lounge area under the stairs, pulled out his favorite Italian beer, and flopped onto one of the couches.

"Barricaded? Meaning no civilians or cops inside the place?"

Lady was writing down directions on a notepad, "Yeah, Da Silva said the cops all cleared out by nightfall. Real urgent. And they're giving him the runaround, of course."

"Cool, no other humans in the crossfire. When do we leave?"

Lady closed the atlas with a deliberate slam.

"As soon as YOU buy me that new motorcycle," she glowered.

Dante choked on his Menabrea, "God! Are we still on THAT?"

* * *

The devil hunters pulled their crimson Kawasaki Ninjas over to the roadside as soon as they saw the crashed cop bike. Dante, who wasn't licensed, had had to put both bikes in her name.

Lady pulled off her full-faced helmet and dismounted, as he doffed his minimalist headgear and shook out his snowy hair.

"Stupid helmet laws," he hadn't stopped bitching since he realized it was the only way to not get pulled over.

She dropped to one knee, examining the scene, "You might appreciate it if you were, oh, you know, human."

He shrugged and sniffed, pulled out his water bottle and took a long pull. "You see any tracks, Tonto?"

She ignored the remark, "Looks like someone wiped out here all right. From the skid marks, they were going pretty quick too when whatever it was happened. Yeah, see? It's definitely that missing cop's bike, it's from Braham. Wonder why the other cops didn't find it? I'll see if I can get the saddlebags open, could you give me a hand? ... Dante?"

She turned to see her partner staring up the road at a visibly approaching fog bank. She'd seen that look in his eyes before when he sensed the presence of his demonic kin — eager, wrathful, smug. She stopped her investigation and jogged back to her Ninja, where she unwrapped the long "telescope" strapped to the bike, unveiling her rocket launcher. Slinging it over her shoulder, she drew her Glock and her TEC-9 and clicked off the safeties.

"Oooohkay. What the hell?"

"Hopefully, yeah," he dismounted as the fog bank silently engulfed them. He unzipped the bass case containing his sword Rebellion, slung it over his shoulder and snapped it onto its magnetic clip. With the slightest shrug he ensured that his customized Colt pistols Ebony and Ivory were properly seated in their holsters under his coat.

The fog had fully swallowed them now, whiting out the sky and reducing visibility to a dozen yards. Lady swept the area with her guns, arms outstretched, covering 180 degrees at a time. Softly, white flakes began to flutter from overhead, though it was much too warm for snow. She caught one on her fingertips, where it revealed itself as gritty ash.

Without a word, Dante began coolly marching up the road. Even though the fog could separate them in an instant, she knew that dissuading her partner once he sensed demonic energies was nearly impossible.

"Ok, but what about my bikes?" she pleaded as she ran to catch up.

* * *

"Finally, some action!" Dante gloated, unholstering his black and white pistols and quickening his pace.

Lady squinted ahead, her human eyes straining to make sense of the white void around them. She could barely make out that a roadside fence separated them from a hillside of broken rubble. Up ahead, a smudge in the fog slowly resolved into a vaguely humanoid figure. She trained her pistol on it.

Her partner had already closed the gap between himself and the figure, and cocked his head to one side. The creature could now be clearly seen, and while it was certainly disturbing it presented no clear threat. It resembled some kind of naked multiple amputee, missing arms, genitals, even a face. Twitching spastically, it staggered forward in a duck-footed gait while its head lolled loosely atop its shoulders.

Dante just sighed disappointedly and slung a pistol over his shoulder.

"Ew. Sorry, I ain't got no Bactine,"

The figure stopped, shuddering as though its lunch wasn't agreeing with it. Abruptly, its chest ripped wide apart and a spray of black fluid erupted towards Dante.

Lady opened up with both of her handguns. Dante rolled out of splash range and stood, pistols blazing. The thing shuddered as bullets thudded into it and collapsed in a ruin. The puddle of its full-body vomit hissed and bubbled as it ate into the blacktop.

"Aw, c'mon! Don't give up now!" Dante whined as his attacker melted into the roadway.

"His friends ain't giving up that easy I don't think," Lady gestured up the hill where a throng of the things lurched towards them. These were moving noticeably faster though, and some had their torsos pre-split. Another wave staggered into view from the general direction of the town, where beastie number one had come from.

"OK, now this is more like it!" Dante exclaimed, before leaping a dozen feet in the air, drawing his sword and coming down like a guillotine in the midst of the nearest grouping.

"You — you lunatic!" Lady shouted, opening up with both guns on the swarm coming down the hill. She'd fought side-by-side with the half-devil before, but she still couldn't understand his need to go hand-to-hand with demon mobs. It sure wasn't to conserve his ammo, somehow any gun he used had an infinite supply.

But Lady wasn't so blessed, and after emptying two clips into the lurching throng and dropping about a quarter of them, she realized it was time to step up her game. She spun out of the way of an advancing vomit-thing as it snapped at her with its ripped-open torso, holstered her empty Glock and TEC-9, and swung Kalina-Ann into position — the heavily-customized missile launcher she'd named after her mother.

She grinned as she squeezed the trigger, "Let's rock, baby!"

One thunderous shot from Kalina-Ann cleared another quarter of her share of things, and she planted the weapon's bladed end in the blacktop to release a swarm of mini rockets. The creatures were blown apart in black fountains of acid.

"Come and get me!" Dante whooped as he flipped-spun over their heads, spraying bullets into the horde. He hit the dirt, rolled, lunged across the ground sword-first, and buried it in the torsos of three demons. These he skewered them with a blindingly fast flurry of stabs, before scattering them with a final thrust.

Calmly slinging Rebellion over his shoulder he grinned at the surviving monsters as they backed away in shock, unsure of how to handle a human who fought back with so much power.

Dante shrugged and spread his arms wide in mock sympathy, "You scared?"

Impossibly fast, he pulled out his sawed-off twelve-gauge and knocked a nearby enemy flat with a point-blank blast. Before it stopped bouncing he had holstered the weapon, snatched Rebellion from his back and swept the sword underhand like an enormous badminton racket, knocking the armless thing skyward. As the helpless monster reached the peak of its arc, the half-devil slung the sword onto his back and drew his pistols, using them to juggle the creature in mid-air on a fountain of bullets.

Minutes later, all that was left of the mob was a field of hissing and smoking corpses and sizzling puddles of demon blood.

"Man, I hate acid," Dante muttered, kicking a corpse's outstretched leg, "Only thing I can't really block ..."

"If either of our targets ran into a crowd of these things ..." Lady tried not to think too hard about a little girl lost in this hell.

"Yeah," Dante resumed his march towards town, "Let's hope there's something left so we can get paid."

Lady was still unsure how much of his self-absorption was a front. She had only seen him express real sentiment once, at the loss of someone close to him. It had been enough to convince her that there was some kindness and compassion in him — though he usually kept it well hidden.

Soon they came upon a silver SUV crashed into a guardrail. Lady searched the inside and confirmed it to be the one belonging to the Da Silvas, while Dante stood by, obviously bored. In the back seat she found a child's drawing of ... something — mostly black smudges of crayon and fragments of shapes, topped by the word "SCKOOL." The steering wheel had a smear of blood on it at about where the driver's forehead would have struck. The keys were gone.

"Bet she wishes she'd gotten the model with airbags," Lady remarked from the front passenger seat. "No signs of a struggle though. If she took the keys, they probably left under their own power."

"Cool," Dante replied from the other side of the road where he was zipping up his fly. He wasn't really listening.

"You know, clues and information might be the only things that will save this woman and her daughter," Lady spat. The years she had spent hunting down her malevolent father after he killed her mother had taught her the value of thorough investigation.

"See, this is why I don't like missing persons cases," Dante sneered as he crossed the road, "As far as I'm concerned, the best way to help any innocents here is to just kill everything else," he leaned against the guardrail, and cast his gaze in the direction of town. "The quicker we do that, the quicker we'll find them, 'cuz they'll be all that's left. Simpl ... Shit. Hey! Hey you!"

Lady sprang from the vehicle as her partner darted ahead, leaving the doors open as she dashed after him. No way was she going to let this unnatural fog separate them.

"Who is it? What did you see?" she shouted, struggling to keep up.

"A kid, a little girl. Long dark hair, dirty clothes," he called back.

"Sounds, huh, kind of like our, haaaah, haaah... our victim... Don't you fucking ditch me!" If the road hadn't sloped downhill at that point, she would have lost him to the fog. Again she regretted leaving the bikes.

"Dammit... damn, that kid's fast. Or something," Dante came to a halt and waited for his partner.

"Thanks for stopping," Lady gasped.

"Well, the kid vanished on me anyhow," hands on hips, he stood a moment. "That tears it. I don't like being teased. Something's trying to fuck with us here, and that ain't my style. Let's get into town so I can level the place."

* * *

Silent Hill proper sure deserved its name. Only the scuff of the devil hunters' boots on ashy pavement broke the deathly stillness. Years of abandonment to the elements had done a number on the former mining and resort town, and none of the businesses on Main Street were spared the slow creep of rot and decay. Restaurants, bars, barber shops, clothing stores ... everything was faded, dingy, broken, ashen, and bathed in a cold gray light that did nothing to ease the pallor.

Dante strode up the middle of the street, relaxed, swinging his arms, for all the world like a man faintly bored with the oppressive surroundings. Lady brought up the rear, guns in hand, eyes scanning every doorway, every window, every rusted out car.

Dante halted, turned to face an open doorway, "This way."

"What, did you see something? Hear something?"

"Not sure, but something's not right ...well, that is," he waved his hand vaguely, "more 'not-right' than the rest of this place."

Lady grinned as she followed, sweeping the rooftops and the path behind them with cocked guns, "Yeah, I was going to say ..."

Inside, Dante nonchalantly followed a staircase down into pitch blackness. Behind him, Lady pulled out a mini-flashlight and clipped it to her shoulder holster. As her eyes adjusted, she saw their surroundings take a dramatic turn for the macabre at the bottom of the stairs. The degree of decay jumped several orders of magnitude in this cellar. The multi-chambered network of rooms was dominated by rust, soot and debris, while the faintest hints of order were pushed to the margins. Down a hallway and around a bend, they found something baggy and man-sized hanging from a wall.

As Dante approached, he saw that it had probably been human originally. A miner's gas mask topped a bundle of tattered garments with boots hanging beneath, while damp entrails dangled from the middle.

"Fuck," said Lady, disgusted.

Impossibly, the eyes behind the gasmask flew open. Lady staggered a half step, caught her breath and moved to holster her weapons.

"We'll cut you down!" She wanted to be reassuring, but it came out more sickened than anything.

Dante grabbed her wrist without looking away from the hanging victim.

"Don't bother," he commanded flatly, then cocked his head, "... there."

A wall of sound crashed over them, sirens upon sirens, shattering the calm and briefly deafening Lady. Her flashlight flickered and dimmed and started to fail, though she always used fresh batteries on a job. She shook it, and smacked it with the heel of her palm, but it continued to grow weaker. The cold daylight from the stairwell behind them started to fade as well. As the light level dropped rapidly Dante took her shoulder and pulled her back the way they had come.

Lady shouted above the sirens, "What about ... ?"

"Seriously? He's beyond our help right now, he's just bait," Dante stopped at the entrance to the staircase, and turned to face the darkness. He drew Ebony and Ivory as Lady's flashlight gave one last flicker and died completely.

Darkness even blacker than the inside of her eyelids engulfed Lady. As the sirens died away as well, she pressed her elbow against Dante's, glad of his presence.

"It's showtime," Dante piped up, and she could almost hear him grin. She fished a fresh LED flashlight from a belt pouch and clipped it to her shoulder. It should have lit the room like a miniature sun, but it too was dim and flickering. It held, but just barely. Her eyes adjusted, and she saw a dozen shadowy forms surrounding them.

"You want a light?" she asked as she moved back to back with her partner.

"Nah, I don't smoke," he quipped, then took a sniff, "Hmmm. But these guys do."

Indeed, the air carried the smell of charred flesh from a swarm of child-sized horrors encircling them. Four-feet-tall on average, they were twisted like their bones had melted, their blackened skin cracked with each lurch revealing glowing red interiors that dripped embers as they reached forward. Lady felt the puke rise in her throat but choked it back. She preferred to battle tall specters of death, not incinerated children that smelled like a ruined dinner.

The shapes staggered towards them from the shadows all around, from every doorway and hole in the floor, but came to a sudden halt as an eruption of gunfire from the devil hunters tore through them. Sparks and muzzle flares filled the air.

Lady paused to reload as Dante sprang forward, pulling his crystalline three-headed flail Cerberus from beneath his coat, he spiraled through the air into the crowd.

Lady blew through four entire clips without really slowing them down. If her weapons had no effect there was no way she was going to hit these things with her fists — Dante alone was making headway by virtue of his magical ice-chuks.

Holstering her weapons, she vaulted over three of the things trying to corner her, stuck a perfect handspring in one of the few clear areas of ground, and landed inside the stairwell. From that position she was able to hold the monsters at bay with the force of her bullets — not truly damaging them, but knocking them back a few crucial feet.

"Chew on this!" Dante shouted, striking the ground with Cerberus, and a cluster of icy stalagmites erupted before him, shattering three of the things into hissing chunks. "It's COOL!" He slammed all three rods of Cerberus down, and a forest of ice pillars sprang up all around him, killing and injuring six more.

"Bullets don't kill them!" Lady called from the stairwell, "And I don't want to hit you with a grenade!"

"No problem, I got this ... " Dante spun the flail around himself at waist level, knocking back another grouping, "Wheeeeeeooooh! Too easy!"

Indeed, he made it look that way as dozens of the things met their end before him, while he dodged and countered their swipes and tackles. But there seemed to be no end to them, and she wondered how long even Dante could keep going.

Unable to truly mix it up herself, she could only marvel at his performance. Every attack or lunge one of the charcoal children made was deftly countered, dodged, or stopped by a face-full of Cerberus. Without even looking, he struck down opponents coming from all directions, leapt over their heads, bounced again off the shoulders of others, landed in a clear spot and spun the flail like an airplane propeller, shredding three of the monsters. But more and more of the things appeared, and the battlefield was beginning to resemble a fire pit.

Despite Lady's fears, Dante was happier than a pig in muck. These things were clearly demonic, vicious, and hot enough to burn even him if they connected. One misstep, one failed block and they would knock him down and swarm him. But Dante lived to be pushed to his limits, to be forced to find new ways to murder the forces of hell. His blackened soul burned with divine hatred.

For her part, Lady had learned quickly that all practical matters in their partnership were going to be her department. If the missions their newly-formed "Devil May Cry" agency undertook were ever to be about something besides Dante simply proving himself over and over, it was her burden to keep them on track. And in a fight against overwhelming odds his old self-absorption was still total.

"Dante!" She yelled, pleading. But the half-demon ignored her and continued his ecstatic butchery.

"Dante! We have a JOB!"

"I'm DOING it!"

"We have to find the Da Silvas! Dante! You asshole!"

In response he hopped on the back of a downed creature, kicked the floor like a skateboarder, and went sliding across the floor on the thing's back, whooping crazily. Pulling his pistols, he used their recoil to set himself and the thing spinning, knocking creatures flat all around with the gunfire. When he and his ride collided with a wall the impact finally shattered the demon as Dante back-flipped away. But a dozen more had already taken its place in the crowd.

Rage and desperation and an edge of panic rose up in Lady's gut. Her father, whom she had loved with all her heart, had come to this place and when he had returned he was different. Cold. Phony. And he killed her beloved mother days later. And now the only other being since then who had earned her trust was turning his back on her, but more importantly, abandoning a helpless mother and child still out there somewhere. She knew that without Dante's power she stood no chance of saving them on her own. But she was powerless to reach him, let alone slap him hard across the face, or bury her steel-toed boot in his privates as she longed to do now.

Oblivious, the man/demon who was the only hope she and two other people had was shouting with inhuman joy as he got his second wind. His mission: forgotten. Why he was here: forgotten. His humanity: nearly gone, lost in the thrill of endless combat. His sense of self slipped away, leaving only the warrior demon. His thoughts were gleefully consumed with finding flashy new ways to use Cerberus to kill his nameless opponents.

Lady gripped her guns hard enough to hurt. Despair grasped her utterly. A mother and daughter, two more victims about to be sacrificed to Hell, and she couldn't stop it. Again.

Her chest heaved faster and faster ... until something deep inside her seemed to snap — and a howl boiled up her throat, something she had somehow held back since the night she found her mother in a dripping tangle of bloody bed sheets.

"DAAANTEE! You demonic SHIT ... you MONSTER!" She screamed, her voice piercing the sounds of combat like a knife, "HELP ME, YOU FUCKING COWARD!"

The burning children staggered, and shrieks of their own mingled with hers. They collapsed, still keening, as their bodies crumbled to ash of their own accord. Dante stood stunned, Cerberus dangling at his side, clanking as it swung. Suddenly he was alone on the field of battle, watching his enemies turn to dust for no good reason. There is no victory in this, the beast inside him raged, he hadn't won ... but the warrior demon was no longer alone in Dante's head. The human boy who had called himself "coward" and far worse on many dark nights had now awoken in a storm of emotions.

His back still to his partner, he slowly put Cerberus back under his coat.

"What ... did you call me?" he spoke from the darkness, not turning. Not moving.

Lady swallowed. Her thoughts were torn ... what had happened here? But Dante didn't move, didn't make a sound. Something told her she was again in mortal danger. She chose her words carefully.

"We," she repeated the word for emphasis, "We have a job. There's a mother ... and a child ... at the mercy of all of Hell out there."

She swallowed, "They need help."

Dante remained still, not looking at her, his menacing figure in the center of the room cast a single long shadow in the beam of her light.

"Sound familiar to you? I know it does to me." Her tone still had an edge of accusation, but it was tempered with an appeal. They knew each others' stories by now after many long dull nights of beer, pizza, and no phone calls to the shop. As angry and frightened as she was right now, she reached out to that common bond.

"If you ever," his voice was low, sinister, as though it came from the darkness itself, "If you ever cross that line again ..."

Lady said nothing.

He spun on his heel and marched towards the stairwell, dragging his shadow along behind. They both avoided eye contact. He brushed past her without pausing.

"Just don't," he snarled over his shoulder.

* * *

Outside, the light had returned — such as it was. The thick fog and slow rain of ash was surreally calm after the last 20 minutes of insanity. Lady actually welcomed it as she took stock, but what she found in her belt pouches didn't reassure her.

"I've used up about half my ammo, and we still don't have many clues," she said, all business.

Dante, bored again already, tried to keep it professional as well — as much as he could, anyway.

"So ... why didn't you just bring more?" he asked. It seemed an obvious question to him.

"Because," she nearly snapped, "Some of us can't just pull weapons and ammo out of thin air like ... like Bugs Bunny." She paused to regain her calm, then simply said. "I brought as much as I could."

"Heh. Hahahaha ..."

Lady looked at him, confused. Still chuckling, Dante glanced over his shoulder to see Lady staring at him.

"Bugs Bunny?" he gave her a half-grin, "Now he's totally cool."

A pause, and Lady grinned too. Dante was back. Or at least the version of Dante she preferred. She feared that some day his brooding, grim and silent side would take over completely.

"Well, OK," he looked around, seeing no obvious next steps in their investigation, "You wanna head back to the bikes or something? Though if we got you to a defensible position, I could get there and back in a ..."

"No," she interrupted, "You think this place would let you find me again if we split up?" She sighed, "I'm not going to be much use if all I can do is yell, and there's no guarantee the next things we run into will have that kind of weakness."

Dante just stood and waited. This issue of adequate supplies was new to him.

"Let's head that way, but see if we can't find a gun store or something. Maybe there'll be something I can use."

They headed back through the main shopping district roughly the way they had come, but their search ended abruptly when the road ... stopped. Actually, the ground itself stopped, ending at a sheer cliff dropping straight into foggy nothingness.

Lady gaped, but Dante folded his arms and just grinned in appreciation.

"Niiiiice," was all he said.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 

Lady finally remembered to close her mouth.

Her mind reeled at the level of supernatural power being displayed before her. Experimentally, she picked up a stone and flung it out a short way over the abyss ... and watched it drop into the void and vanish. She waited for a 'bang' or a 'splash,' or any other sound of it hitting bottom. She waited. And waited. And waited ...

Finally, Dante broke the silence.

"Oh no. We're trapped," he smirked in mock horror. Lady glanced at him, irritated. "Oh, come on. Lighten up. Don't tell me you weren't expecting something like this."

Lady sighed, and shifted the weight of Kalina-Ann on her shoulder. She turned and headed back up the street, letting Dante bring up the rear for once.

"Guess we're doing this your way," she huffed.

---

Time passed meaninglessly. Soon after finding the route back had vanished Lady checked her watch only to find it stopped. Dante, of course, didn't wear one.

Nothing attacked them as they fruitlessly searched storefronts and empty streets and even some cars for more ammunition for Lady's weapons. Nothing. Dante's boredom grew exponentially, and when Lady became desperate enough to enter a sporting goods store and ponder the usefulness of an aluminum baseball bat vs. a hockey stick as possible melee weapons, he finally had had enough.

"OK, listen. You just go easy on the ammo, and leave most of the fighting to me. It's not like I'd mind."

Lady dropped the bat, brushed her hands off, and together they headed towards the next block to search for the victims.

"Guess I don't have much of a choice," she sighed, "But you've got to promise me, _promise me_, that you won't go losing your head again."

She peered at him sternly.

"Promise me."

Dante rolled his eyes, and then his whole head.

"Ok, Ok, I promise. Geeze..."

"Which means that if you have a choice between a 'good fight' or whatever, and helping to find this woman and her kid ..."

"Alright, I get the picture."

As they rounded a corner a new structure loomed before them, a large, two-story school building of early 20th century design. Its windows were mostly broken out, its façade was blackened and crumbling, but there was no mistaking it.

"Speaking of pictures ..." Dante muttered.

Confused, Lady glanced away from the foreboding structure.

"What do you mean?" she asked, though she had an idea.

"That drawing you found in their car. It said 'school' on it."

Lady grinned, pleasantly surprised, "I thought you weren't paying attention."

"Hey. I'm not a complete moron," he said as he headed for the front entrance.

"Seriously? Color me shocked," she smirked.

"Har."

Inside, what had been a large elementary school was now a labyrinth of empty rooms decorated with crumbling paint (probably lead-based, Lady thought) and water stains, totally open to the elements. They went classroom by classroom, but the story was always the same -- child-sized desks awaiting students who would never return.

"You know, one thing kind of surprises me," Lady mused as they headed upstairs to the second floor.

"What's that?"

"No graffiti. None. Abandoned buildings and ghost towns are usually magnets for teenagers, vagrants, and other weirdoes. But none of them decided to write their name or draw something gross?"

"Yeah. Well, the demons might explain that, or the magical cliffs. But actually, I'm starting to think we aren't really where we think we are," Dante said as they entered yet another classroom.

"How do you mean?" Lady asked as she started to check through the room, while Dante casually leaned against the doorframe.

"Can't put my finger on it, but ever since that fog rolled in, and especially after we came up from the basement, this whole town has felt a bit like the Demon World. But not exactly."

Lady paused by one of the desks and turned to look at him, "Where you fought my father and your brother?"

"Yeah, but not quite. This has a different ... flavor, I guess. Like there's evil in the air, no doubt about that. But it's tinged with something, I dunno, sick."

Lady turned back to the desk she stood over, "Something sicker than evil? That's a comforting thought."

On an impulse, Lady opened the top of the desk before her. Her eyes widened.

"Well, looky here," she said as she pulled out a pile of children's drawings, all smudges and blackness, done in a familiar style. She held one up for Dante, and he peered at it from the doorway.

"Ok, wait. That kid went to school here? Like 20 years ago? I mean, nothing here makes much sense, but that's just silly."

Lady sorted through the sheaf of construction paper.

"Her. Or someone awfully similar in outlook. I'm starting to think we don't know the whole story on our victims," Lady folded one of the drawings and stuck it in a pocket as they left the classroom.

Back in the hallway, Dante paused, then turned towards a door labeled "Girls."

"Um, I'm sure there's a boys' room nearby ..." Lady said, disturbed.

"It's not about that," Dante said as he opened the door. Still unsure, Lady followed him inside.

Inside, more decay was in the process of consuming the child-sized stalls and sinks. Dante marched inside and, as Lady covered the door to the hall, he strode up to the last stall and kicked it open with a resounding 'SLAM!' Lady flinched at the noise, but she knew the word 'stealth' was not in his vocabulary (much less 'tact' or 'class' ... or 'comb' for that matter).

"Wanna see something gross?" he called.

Lady made a face, but reluctantly left her post to join him.

"This better be relevant and not just some disgust ... uh."

Inside was the desiccated body of a human, contorted so that its spine bent in reverse far enough that the feet nearly touched the back of its head. Many strands of barbed wire, rusted and caked with dried blood, bound it in this hideous position. Its face reached upwards, its eyes covered with a tightly wrapped strip of cloth, and its mouth was stretched open in a soundless scream. Lady found herself wishing he had simply shown her a backed-up toilet.

"And check this out," with that Dante entered the stall and reached for the corpse's neck, from which he plucked a pendant of some type, snapping its chain. Proud as a cat with a dead bird he presented the find to Lady, who only stared at him in disgust.

"And you say I'm no good with clues," he grinned, but then her expression registered with him. "What?"

"Nothing, never mind," she took the pendant and saw it was definitely religious, a cross of some kind, but with several bars and a more complicated design. She tried to ignore the obviously tortured-to-death corpse before her.

"Did we see a church on the way here?" she asked, turning the pendant over in her hand, but he didn't answer. "Dante?"

"Cover your ears," he said, but it was on them again -- a blast of sirens seemingly 10 times louder than before.

Lady staggered, in genuine pain this time. Reeling, she tried to steady herself against the wall, barely holding on to the pendant, clutching her ears desperately. The lights outside dimmed again rapidly. She fumbled with the light still affixed to her weapon harness, and it sparked to life, weak and flickering. Looking up, her stomach knotted at what she saw.

It was like being trapped inside a time-lapsed movie on the subject of rot. As she watched, the already decaying surroundings began to rapidly melt, flake, crumble and collapse around them. Twenty, forty, sixty years worth of erosion seemed to happen within seconds -- paint curled up on itself and turned to dust, ceiling tiles rotted from their fastenings and dropped, only to become so much powder before even hitting the floor. The wooden partitions of the stalls melted like sugar in boiling water, and pipes newly exposed by the rapid destruction rusted away to red-orange piles before her eyes.

As she stood in horrified awe at the changes sweeping the darkening room, Dante abruptly grabbed her by the belt and yanked her behind him. She spun and tried to steady herself against a sink, but it crumpled at her touch and she barely kept her footing.

She looked to Dante, who stood pointing his shotgun at the stall. The sirens continued, preventing communication, but she knew better than to question his actions when the supernatural tried to ambush them.

As the sirens faded and the light reached its minimum level, her skin crawled at another sound assaulting her ears--a piercing scrape as of a metal rake dragged across a sidewalk. Like fingernails on a blackboard. Like tinfoil on her teeth. She drew one of her pistols to back up Dante, but her muscles twitched the whole time. The corpse was moving, scraping its rusting bindings across the floor tiles.

With its broken and dislocated limbs flexing despite the razor wire binding them, it dragged itself along, still contorted into an inhuman position. The sound and sight was so hideously _wrong_ she could barely lift her one pistol.

BANG! Dante's shotgun blast nearly deafened her again, but for once she was glad. The corpse was smashed back three feet across the floor, collided with the wall, and kept twitching.

"Man! That is just so f-"

BANG!

"-ing annoying!"

BANG!

After each shot Dante twirled the 12-gauge on his finger, somehow reloading and re-cocking it with each spin, while shell casings popped out, pinged off the floor, and promptly vanished.

BANG!

The corpse stopped moving.

"Come on," Dante gave it a swift kick, smashing in its face. "Wimp."

He turned to Lady who was holstering her Glock and coming to investigate, but he waved her back

"Something tells me we're about to have more company," he said.

A new sound, not as nerve-wracking but just as ominous, came from the body. A frantic chittering, a scurrying. Lady gasped in disgust as an oversized cockroach, at least three inches in length, crawled out of the corpse's ruined face, froze briefly in that way insects do, then scrambled towards Dante. A handful of the insects followed, then a bucketful, then an infinite stream poured from the mangled remains like clowns from a Volkswagen.

Dante was firing Ebony and Ivory like twin machine guns, destroying a roach with each precise shot, but the flood was such that even he had to back up towards Lady, who was already struggling with the window frame. A writhing carpet of pests, their feelers waving madly, quickly blocked the door they had come in through.

Giving up on opening the window normally, Lady smashed out the privacy glass with the rear of Kalina-Ann, and promptly leapt through. Dante held his ground for another few seconds, but seeing he'd be shortly overwhelmed he turned and grabbed the window frame and swung through it like a gymnast.

The two-story drop to the ground was nothing to Dante, but Lady had barely managed to avoid injury by aiming for what she hoped was a patch of grass and rolling. As Dante landed like a cat, his crimson coat fluttering around him, Lady was brushing the dirt from her knees and butt, checking for scrapes. Dante flapped his coat, and surveyed his legs in case he needed to dislodge any hitchhikers. Finding nothing on either of them, Lady shouldered Kalina-Ann as they surveyed their new surroundings.

They were in the school's central courtyard. The light still hadn't returned, but the feeble glow of Lady's flashlight showed that the exaggerated rate of decay had taken hold out here as well. A few dozen yards across a sparsely covered central lawn there was a patch of deeper darkness hinting at an exit.

"Actually, yeah," Dante said without preamble.

"'Yeah,' what?" Lady was confused.

"I did see a church, or at least the top of one, through one of the windows. It was on like the far side of the school," Dante pointed ahead as he set off across the yard.

"So that must be the next stage," said Lady as she flanked him and peered ahead into the gloom. The exit was a large arch, decaying like everything else here, which lead into a darker passageway. From what she remembered, it should let them out on the side of the school closest to the church. Lady unholstered her Glock to reload it as she walked, and didn't notice Dante had stopped at the entrance until he was a few steps behind.

"Dante ...?" She turned, and nearly dropped her gun in surprise.

A red curtain of energy had materialized in the archway, keeping her out of the courtyard and sealing Dante in. In the red glow, she could make out what appeared to be images of faces rippling through the barrier, faces contorted in agony, or fear or rage. Damned souls of some kind, she figured.

"You might want to take a step ..."

Abruptly, the glowing curtain curled itself into an immense hand that swiped at Lady and sent her flying several feet.

"... back." Dante grimaced in empathy.

She landed hard, feeling as if she had just touched a live power line. Gasping, she rolled over into a sitting position.

"What the HELL is that?"

"Dunno," Dante shrugged, "But it happens to me a lot."

She scrambled back up, snarling at being caught flat-footed, and hauled Kalina-Ann into firing position.

"Move out of the way, I'm gonna..."

"Don't waste your ammo. It won't do any good," Dante said as he casually started some light stretching, rotating his shoulders first, then his neck. "Besides, I think you're in for a show."

"Huh?" Lady lowered the missile launcher in confusion, but then she spotted some movement at the far side of the courtyard. Dante was already turning to face it.

The shape was hard to make sense of at this distance, as with all the demons they'd encountered here, but this one was much bigger than the others. It was bipedal, she could see that immediately, and at least nine--maybe 12--feet tall. Its legs were like small trees, and its arms were long and thick and knotted with muscle. But the torso ... the torso was absurd. Or creepy as all hell.

As Dante marched coolly out to meet it in the middle of the courtyard, she was finally able to make sense of what she was seeing. What had seemed at first like a cartoon of a walking pyramid was in fact a gigantic man wearing an even more gigantic helmet, triangular in shape, which covered the entire upper third of his body. The figure dragged behind it an equally oversized knife-shaped sword, longer even than Dante's five-foot sword Rebellion, with a blade a couple of feet wide. Around its waist the figure wore a long apron, like a butcher's smock, pale in color like the man's skin, and splattered with what must be dried blood, also like his skin.

Something about the apparition reminded her of her father...Even at this distance it stank of blood and rape. Lady clutched Kalina-Ann in nauseous fear as her knees nearly gave out on her. Surely this must be Death, she thought, come to devour me…

"Hey. Nice hat."

Dante had stopped a dozen feet from the thing and crossed his arms, striking a pose. Lady couldn't help but grin at that, and her panic eased a little.

The helmet-thing also stopped. It spread its arms wide, pointing the blade upward, and continued to raise them over its imprisoned head, higher and higher, until it held the sword high over its pointed helm. Then, grasping the hilt with both massive meaty hands, it brought the blade down in a thunderous impact that staggered Lady, brought a rain of debris down from the walls of the abandoned school, and engulfed the warriors in a cloud of dust.

As it settled, she saw Dante hadn't moved.

"Man of few words. I like that," Dante unslung Rebellion and casually propped it over his shoulder, "But back to your fashion sense... Ever heard of _pants?_"

The monster lifted its great knife, charged at Dante, and swung. At the last possible instant Dante leapt over it and came down on its helm with Rebellion. But instead of breaking open the monster's headgear, Rebellion bounced off with a resounding 'clang,' and Dante rebounded behind the creature. Before he even hit the ground, he had re-slung his sword and was blasting away at the monster's back with Ebony and Ivory. But the creature turned to block most of the bullets with its helm and enormous blade.

Right as he touched down Dante lunged in with Rebellion, but with another loud 'clang' the creature raised its guard and the opponents bounced off each other, staggered. Dante recovered a quarter instant faster and brought his sword in to chop at the thing's exposed torso, but the creature simply lunged forward with its sharp-edged helm, struck Dante amidships, and sent him flying. He skidded on his butt as he landed, scissored his legs in the air like a break-dancer, and hopped to his feet.

Anyone else watching would have thought the blow had barely fazed Dante, but Lady knew him well enough to know it had hurt.

Again he pounded away at the thing with Ebony and Ivory, but the bullets bounced harmlessly off his armored adversary. Then Dante did something Lady had seen him do a few times before, but still couldn't believe. He vanished with a "shwoof" -- a sound vaguely like a sneeze -- to reappear over the monster's head and blast it point-blank with his shotgun. Dante bounced on its helmet, pushed off from a red flash of magical energy that appeared at his feet, and zoomed horizontally across the courtyard. Before landing, he "shwoofed" back again, blasted the creature with his shotgun, and bounced up and away.

It might have looked like Dante was merely playing with his foe, but Lady saw it for what it was -- Dante was stumped and was trying to find an opening. Her earlier concern began to return.

Dante waded back in towards the thing, peppering it with a steady stream of pistol fire and forcing it to take its defensive stance. When he was no more than a yard away, he stopped firing.

"Come and get me," he coaxed it with both hands out. Lady slapped her forehead.

The creature obliged and swung its blade, but this time Dante slid out of range like an ice skater, instantly reversed, and sped back in with Rebellion. But again he was repelled and staggered by the monster's defense. Before he could even leap away the demon lunged with its helmet, and this time Dante went flying into a wall. He bounced off and landed in a heap, without an ounce of his usual cool.

"Dante!" Lady screamed, beginning to truly panic.

As Dante struggled to his feet, the pyramid creature lumbered forward and tried to grab the devil hunter with its free hand. But Dante evaded by running straight up the wall, hovered overhead by firing down with Ebony and Ivory (that shouldn't even work, thought Lady), and plunged downward with Rebellion. Again, he bounced off the creature's helm, but he swung his sword around again and struck.

Clang!

Again, he struck down with Rebellion from mid-air.

Clang!

Frustrated, Dante landed, skidded to the creature's side, pulled Cerberus from under his coat and spun through the air, swinging the flail madly. But still he struck armor and rebounded. He landed and twirled Cerberus in front of him by its central ring as the demon swung its huge knife. The blade clashed with Cerberus and sparks flew, the impact nearly knocking Cerberus from Dante's hand as his arm went numb. He drew Ebony and Ivory to put the thing on the defensive again, but the pyramid monster had had enough.

The beast grabbed the silver-haired warrior by the front of his red waistcoat, hauled him off his feet and slammed him into the wall. Dante struggled like a child in its powerful grip as the hellish butcher drew back its long knife.

With no breath left to insult his executioner, Dante spat onto its helm.

The blade came in like a missile, split open the devil-hunter's ribcage, severed his spine, and buried half its length in the wall, skewering Dante like a crimson butterfly. Blood gushed from the wound, down Dante's legs, and splashed in the dirt.

Lady just screamed, without any hope at all.

To be continued … 


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

As Lady's scream echoed, the scarlet energy curtain over the archway shattered like a stained-glass window. She raised her arms to shield her eyes, but the red shards flew past and through her with no more substance than moonlight.

The nightmarish murder-thing turned to face her. She stared back as it began to lumber towards the arch.

Her desperate panic abruptly inverted itself and became a frothing rage. Raising Kalina-Ann to her shoulder, she targeted the son-of-a-bitch.

"Eat this!" and she fired off a bunker-buster. The thing hunkered behind its helm and took the full force of the missile's impact. When the fireball cleared Lady saw it had been knocked back a few paces and its helm and skin were blackened, but it had already resumed its advance. She cursed and reloaded.

It had covered half the distance between them by the time she fired again, and the blastwave of heat from the explosion blew back her hair and nearly singed her eyebrows. Yet the beast lost only a few steps and resumed its relentless plodding march.

"Dammit!" With a last glance at Dante's dangling corpse she shouldered Kalina-Ann, turned, and hauled ass.

---

Back on the street, Lady scanned what little area she could see in the dim glow of her flashlight. She could hear the demon's heavy footsteps behind her.

There was no way she was going to find the church in this gloom, but she made a best guess at its direction and ran.

Moments passed, and Lady was sure she should have crossed the street by now. There should have been buildings to hide in, but somehow she must have run straight up the middle of the road, and the layer of dirt hid any lane markers that might have indicated direction. Against her better judgment, she turned to look behind her.

She saw nothing, but she heard its footsteps. And if that thing actually had eyes that could see through its enormous headgear, it could definitely see the flicker of her light. She scanned her few yards of visibility – just more pavement all around, interrupted only by a manhole cover. She cursed and doused her light, hoping that it would work again when she needed it. Absolute blackness engulfed her.

Dropping to all fours, she crawled through the dirt towards the manhole, searching with her gloved hands. Finding it, she wedged the bladed tip of Kalina-Ann under the rim, and lifted it with a grunt. No time to be really stealthy, she thought, and dropped the lid with a loud bang. Hopefully the darkness would cover her location somewhat, and the opening itself would be too small for her pursuer.

Reaching down, she found the first rung of a ladder and began a quick descent into the town's innards, totally blind.

"Out of the frying pan," she mumbled, "into the sewer …"

She climbed down for seconds or minutes, too wound up on adrenaline to really gauge time and distance. With a splash, her booted foot touched bottom in ankle-deep water (God, I hope it _is_ water, she thought with a grimace), and stood still to listen.

Above her, the monster's footsteps had drawn close, and stopped. She froze, barely breathing. Would it follow her? _Could_ it follow her?

The beast shuffled around above her for a while, but drew no closer. Then it simply trudged away.

She held her position, not moving. She knew monsters like this one just loved to lure victims into a false sense of relief right before springing some loud surprise attack. But she had her own loud surprise prepared as she gripped Kalina-Ann's trigger handle with one hand and a rung of the ladder with the other.

When nothing happened after a good long interval, she finally relaxed a little.

"God dammit, Dante…" she muttered, pulling out her TEC-9 and checking its magazine by feel. All that crap in the tower-of-Hell and now he goes and gets himself killed in some hick ghost town. Idiot.

She wiped the tears from her face, and continued her self-assessment by touch. Three missiles left for Kalina-Ann, five clips for the Glock, three for the TEC-9, and a dozen rounds for the "mare's leg" strapped to her thigh as a last resort. Not hopeless, but not great.

Feeling the wall with her left hand and keeping Kalina-Ann's sharpened blade out in front, she picked a direction at random and started to slog through the sewer.

After what felt like 15 minutes or so, the wall made a 90-degree turn. A dozen yards further, when she was sure there was no longer any line of sight with the manhole behind her, she risked reactivating her light. It came on at half power, burning steadily for once, and when nothing leapt out at her, she scanned her surroundings with a tactical eye. Nothing. Just a sewer, and an inactive one at that. No longer carrying waste from the long-empty town, it was now just a wet tunnel choked with leaves, regular dirt, and murky water.

She splashed along until she found another ladder leading to another manhole. Standing below it she shut off her light, let her eyes adjust, and looked upward. Sure enough, pale-gray daylight glowed through the cover's holes. She flicked her light on again, made one last survey to ensure nothing was going to jump her during the ascent, and climbed upwards.

She emerged into the cold light and open air next to a sign, "Brookhaven Hospital," with the institution itself looming above her. As she stood pondering her next move (search this place, or look for the church?) a strange sound broke through the stillness. Voices. Human voices! Her heart skipped, and she nearly broke into a sprint before catching herself. Getting a firm mental grip on her desperation, she pulled her handguns and stalked them at a cautious pace.

They were heading away from the hospital, dragging something along, making no attempt at being quiet about it. Lady soon realized though that it couldn't be the Da Silvas. For one thing, there were too many of them. For another, they were mostly men, with an older woman's voice giving the orders.

The road widened, and Lady found she could outflank the group while staying hidden by the fog (gratified that her now dingy white bodysuit blended so well with the mists) as she silently ran along a grassy embankment.

Then a second female voice cried out in sharp pain. And with that Lady tossed caution to the wind.

"Alright, hold it!" She bellowed.

The group froze in place, terrified, as a wild-eyed, filthy, heavily-armed angel of death emerged from the murk.

When they saw it was only one girl – albeit one that was clearly an insane walking arsenal – they seemed almost relieved. For her part, Lady surveyed their group with confusion and a growing rage.

A troupe of miners in full sooty regalia stood before her, armed with what looked like lengths of pipe, picks and shovels. They were dragging a battered, bloody and limp person in a blue cop's uniform. Seeing that, Lady's brown and blue eyes grew even wilder.

A regal older woman, crowned with a halo of graying red hair and wearing a purple satin robe of some kind, stepped forward and raised a hand in appeal.

"Are you lost, my child …" she began with a gentle smile, but Lady cut her off with a round fired skyward from her Glock.

"Shut up." She pointed her TEC-9 at the group of men, "You. Drop the hardware, put the cop down, and back away slow."

"And you," Lady sneered as she trained her Glock on crazy-witch-lady, "Shut up. I can smell psycho-mindfucker a mile away, and you reek of it."

The woman smiled sadly, and raised both hands in supplication, "My dear …"

POW!

The bullet blasted a divot in the blacktop an inch from the matriarch's foot, making her jump back surprisingly fast. She stared at Lady in open-mouthed shock.

"One more word, one more _syllable_ from you, and you'll eat the rest of these bullets. Do. Not. FUCK WITH ME!" Even Lady was stunned at how insane she sounded, but she rolled with it and turned her glare on the miners, "Get me?"

Picks and shovels dropped with loud bangs as six pairs of hands shot skyward, while their leader backed up to join them.

Keeping the TEC-9 on the crowd, Lady approached the cop, who was trying to roll herself over on the ground, clutching her ribs.

"I … uh. I like your style…" she gasped. But Lady just pointed the Glock at the cop's blond head.

"Say something, right now, that will convince me to help you."

The cop met Lady's eyes and recognized the cold glare of an experienced killer. She ventured the only bit of information that could make any difference.

"Da Silva. Sharon Da Silva…"

Lady collapsed inwardly and lowered the pistol -- though she carefully kept the crowd covered with the sub-machine gun.

"Oh thank God…" she breathed.

---

"I'm real sorry about your partner. I've … I've seen that thing in action," Cybil said as she limped along beside Lady. Using one of the longer picks as a makeshift crutch, Officer Bennett clutched the Glock Lady had loaned her with her free hand. Every time the leader of the townies, Christabella, glanced back at their captors, Cybil made sure to aim at her forehead.

"Thanks," Lady swallowed, "But I'll have to mourn him later … assuming we get out of this."

"I'm pretty sure that you will, at least. Me, I pretty much figured I was a goner …" Cybil trailed off.

"We ain't out yet, so don't make any assumptions either way," Lady said, all business. "When we get to the church, remember, I'll leave you enough ammo to keep this bunch in line, but I've got to get back to that hospital and find Da Silva."

"I think she's going to need you. You seem to have a pretty good handle on this kind of thing," Cybil studied Lady's face. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"Couple of times. My partner usually handles the heavy lifting …" she took a breath, "But I'm going to do everything I can to get you and the Da Silvas out of here."

"I bet you will," Cybil concluded.

Inwardly, Lady was glad to be holding it together. But ever since she had finally defeated her father, her zeal for this kind of long weekend wasn't what it had been.

At last, the church building emerged from the gloom before them, its doors wide, a comforting amber light pouring out. Lady began to breathe easier.

Then the sirens blasted all hope of peace from the world.

"Not now! Not now!" she screamed, but her voice was obliterated by the noise. It was clear now that the sound radiated from speakers atop the church itself, sending a warning to the entire region. Dozens of people began to appear, racing pell-mell for the church doors. The ever-present mists roiled as darkness gathered all around, slowly devouring them.

Lady jerked as Cybil grabbed her shoulder. She was yelling something and pointing at the church doors. Their captives had already fled, far more terrified of the onrushing dark than any number of bullets. Cybil was pushing against Lady's back, pointing at the church and shouting. Lady shook her head viciously, pulled Cybil's good arm over her shoulder, and together they began a desperately slow limp towards whatever sanctuary the cult's church offered.

We're dead, Lady thought, but I'll be damned if I leave someone out here. Fuck you, father, not all humans are selfish, conniving cowards. You underestimated us too.

They managed to reach the bottom of the stairs as full darkness finally settled in, yet the church doors remained wide open. Looking up, Lady saw their leader, Christabella, standing primly in the doorway, grinning in satisfaction. It wasn't mercy. The bitch just wanted to watch.

As the sirens faded, Lady hauled Cybil up one step, and then two. Lady knew at this point that hope was stupid … but if they could just get up the last dozen steps …

Then with a rustling, crackling sound the darkened world began to disintegrate like it had done in the school. The very concrete of the stairs they struggled on began to crack as if a century of rough weather were eating it. It peeled off in flakes that floated upwards on the breeze.

Lady suddenly knew, just knew, there was something behind them. There was no question what it was.

And they still weren't even halfway up the stairs.

Looking up, Lady saw Christabella grinning in righteous amusement.

I'm sorry mom, Lady's inner voice cried. I'm sorry, Dante. I'll do what I can to make you proud, but …

Suddenly, Cybil yanked herself free of Lady's support, spinning to face behind them, and fired off three rounds from the Glock as her busted leg gave out and she fell to the stairs. Lady turned with the TEC-9 in hand but collided with something harder than a brick wall and staggered. A blast of foul breath from the thing's helm hit Lady in the nose.

It hadn't just been behind them, it was right on top of them.

There was no time to even pull the trigger, as the pyramid-headed enforcer grasped the collar of Lady's catsuit and lifted her like a doll. She choked for air and kicked her legs, but nothing fazed it as it carried her up the stairs.

Lady could just make out the sound of the Glock as Cybil fired from her prone position, screaming something about "not again!"

Lady's vision and hearing dimmed.

… Mom… please, I….

Then there was a sound like the world exploding.

Lady dropped in a heap to the staircase. Gasping, she rolled away and looked up to see the monster still looming over her, only now it was down on one knee as an inch-wide hole in its helm trickled smoke upwards.

Another ripping blast, and another hole appeared next to the first with an impact hard enough to kick it over onto its side.

Lady knew that sound. But there was no way. No way. Hope was stupid. But she looked to the bottom of the stairs anyhow where a crimson figure stepped out of the night carrying an enormous anti-tank rifle and sporting a gleefully vicious grin.

"Ehhh... What's up, Doc?"

Lady nearly blacked out with relief and joy, but she knew the cost of relaxing in a place like this. She sat up and yelled.

"Don't joke around, just kill it!"

"Nice to see you too!" Dante yelled back, but he raised the gun Spiral again and fired, punching another pair of holes in the monster's defense and knocked the fiend onto its back.

Lady turned and locked eyes with the dumbfounded Christabella. But as the cult's matriarch reached for the doors, a bullet whizzed past her ear, sending her running inside. Lady who had dropped her TEC-9, turned to see a crawling Cybil holding the smoking Glock.

"Sorry I missed," She grinned in apology, "I've had kind of a long day…"

Lady scrambled down the stairs and yanked Cybil roughly to her feet, eliciting a shout of pain from her.

"Sorry…"

"Fuck it. Just move!"

The women struggled up the far side of the stairs from the monster, retrieving the TEC-9 as they went. The creature was slowly pulling itself upright, clawing its way up the church wall as it tried to balance its massive helm.

"Actually, it's a stupid hat," Lady spat as they passed.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Lady hauled Cybil to the entrance and dropped her as gently as she could to the floor. Handing her the TEC-9, Lady nodded towards the cowering cultists.

"Watch them."

"Ooooh, you bet."

Lady coolly reloaded Kalina-Ann as she marched back out to the top of the staircase. Only one demon is getting in here, she thought, and that's after he murders the one in the giant cheese grater.

---

At the bottom of the stairs, bathed in the glow spilling from the open church, Dante leaned against a tombstone and nibbled a fingernail. As his opponent reached the bottom of the stairs and lumbered forward, Dante glanced at his wrist to check his non-existent watch.

"Damn. If I knew stairs were your big weakness, we wouldn't even need this rematch."

Looking past the advancing horror, he spotted Lady framed in the doorway at the top of the stairs, her figure angelically backlit by golden candlelight, her mammoth gun in the ready position. Damn she's hot, he thought.

He pointed to the monster.

"You understand this is mine, right?" he called.

"Just holding the door open for you," her voice floated down from the sanctuary above. A pause, and then, "Don't screw up!"

"Oh, yeah. Thanks!" he waved a hand in sarcastic acknowledgment and muttered something under his breath.

The creature reached behind itself, and from nowhere it pulled out its huge knife-sword.

Dante did the same and produced a pair of oversized scimitars, one red and one blue, with amazingly lifelike faces in the pommels.

"See brother? We are needed again!" said the blue one.

"Wonderful! What are we fighting? Oh look!" the red one enthused.

The monster was nearly within striking distance. Dante raised the scimitars, furious.

"Shut. UP! Do you two want to end up on eBay?"

The beast raised its blade, but Dante wasn't looking.

"I'm the hero _and_ the comic relief, and I don't need a couple swords trying to upstage me."

"Uh, Mr. Dante … "

The horror swung. This wasn't an impaling strike, it meant to cleave the devil hunter in two at the waist.

CLANG

The beast staggered as its sword rebounded, while Dante straightened from his Aikido stance unharmed, and as calm as a man shopping for groceries.

"See? I got this," Dante grinned at his foe.

It recovered, hauled the blade over its head, and brought it down in an Earth-splitting slash.

CLANG

With her human eyes Lady couldn't even see Dante move -- just that as the creature swung it suddenly bounced back, while Dante relaxed his guard.

"Come and get me."

CLANG

"You scared?"

CLANG

"Craaazzy?!? Huh!"

The beast went for the grab but nearly lost its fingers as the scimitars Agni and Rudra appeared again in Dante's hands, slashing wildly. After a few warm-up swings, the devil hunter got into a rhythm and began boring into the thing's midsection like the serrated blades were a fiery chainsaw. Unable to resist, Agni and Rudra chanted along in their basso-profundo voices.

"SILENCE!" Dante shouted as he broke out of the attack with a final overhead slash, irritated with these otherwise useful blades. If they would only shut the hell up … The monster staggered back a dozen feet clutching its bleeding midsection, then dropped to one knee.

Dante reslung the scimitars on his back and grinned at it.

The monstrous killer recovered, and charged like a bipedal rhino, helm first.

"Okay, time to wrap this up," Dante said.

"Just don't do anything stupid," Lady pleaded under her breath. But Dante didn't move.

The instant that the charging monster struck though, something happened. All Lady could tell was that there was a bang, a crimson flash, a fluxwave of energy … and suddenly Dante was several yards behind the slowly collapsing brute as its helm split apart and fell to either side.

"SSSwweeeet, baby!!" Dante pumped his hands, begging the thing to attack him again even as it died.

Dante calmly walked back to his downed attacker, kicked half of its helm out of the way, drew his shotgun and pointed at the thing's exposed head. Then he froze.

From where Lady stood she couldn't tell what he was seeing, but it somehow paralyzed him. The thing's body began to fade away as light returned to the sky, and Dante dropped to his knees beside it. He said something too quiet for Lady to hear. Then the creature's body was gone.

As the light grew, Dante rose to his feet and slowly climbed the stairs.

"What was it?" she asked.

He said nothing. His eyes were haunted, his expression slack. Now she wasn't just concerned, she was scared.

"What did you see? Please!"

He met her gaze briefly, and there was something in his look that was familiar to her.

"Was it somebody …" she made a little sound, "Oh my God, was it …?"

He walked past her, and paused at the entrance to the church.

"This town," he said without meeting her eyes, "Is messing with our heads. That's how it works. So whatever I did or didn't see … is meaningless."

He went through the doorway, leaving her outside as a cold rain of ash slowly began to flutter down.

"Right," she whispered, "… meaningless."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"Help! One of you get in here! Now!"

It was Cybil's voice that shook Lady out of her reverie. She raced inside behind Dante.

Cybil was pointing up at the church's balcony where one of the cultists, a balding man with the eyes of a fanatic, held a little girl in a blue dress before him. He pressed a butcher's knife to her throat.

"Is that …" Lady blurted.

"It is the daughter of the witch," Christabella proclaimed stepping forward, her sycophants crowding behind her. "You _heathens_ … you shall surrender your weapons, or witness the spilling of this creature's blood…"

"Hey, kid!" Dante yelled, ignoring the advancing congregation. He turned to Lady, "What's her name again?" 

"Sharon," Lady and Cybil spoke simultaneously.

"You shall not block the path of God's holy judgment …" Christabella raised her arms, and her followers braced themselves to charge.

"Sharon!" Dante yelled over the matriarch, "Close your eyes, OK?"

The girl shut them tight as the cultist made ready to slit her throat.

SHWOOF

Dante vanished from the midst of his companions, and instantly reappeared in the air above the balcony. Like a crimson comet he plunged down foot-first and connected with the man's forehead, sending him flying into the back wall of the balcony as the knife spun away to the side.

"Hell yeah," Lady said quietly and pumped her fist once.

Then Dante strode up to the dazed and moaning man, drew his shotgun, and calmly blasted off the top of his skull.

The cultists' horrified screams filled the house of worship.

Dante holstered the smoking weapon, picked up the child and leapt off the balcony, sending the cultists and Christabella fleeing as one to the far end of the church. Dante landed gently next to Lady and set the clinging girl down.

"Not bad, huh?" he grinned.

Lady was dumbstruck as she stared at Dante in mute horror. She'd seen him execute unknown scores of demons with greater efficiency and even more brutality, and she'd gladly cheered him on. But this …

"You fu… You filthy MURDERER!" Cybil exploded from where she lay on the floor.

"Huh?" Dante looked from one woman to the other, totally confused.

"Dante …" Lady began, then remembered the child. She crouched down beside her and beckoned, "Come here, honey…"

But the girl shook her head and pressed back against Dante's legs. She still hadn't let go of his hand.

"When we get out of here, buddy," Cybil was livid, "I'm going to see to it personally that you get the chair."

She paused, thinking…

"As many times as it takes," she finished with a snarl.

"Seriously, what is your problem?" Dante stepped towards the prone cop, but was brought up short by the girl's grip on his hand. He looked down at her, "Uh…"

"Do you know where my mommy's at?" she looked up at him with tear-filled eyes.

"Oh, God, that's right," Lady exclaimed, "She's at the hospital. Sweety, please come here…"

But Sharon hid behind Dante's coat, still clutching his hand in a deathgrip. Dante tried to pull his hand free, but Sharon was having none of it.

"One of you think you could, uh…" Dante looked up to see Cybil leveling the Glock at his forehead. He met her gaze, and now his eyes were cold.

"You know, that's just gonna tick me off and scare the kid," he tugged his hand, but Sharon's grip was firm, "And she's plenty scared as it is."

"Believe him on that one, Cybil. Listen…"

"I'm still a cop, 'Lady,' or whatever your name is," she lowered the gun, only to point it at Dante's privates instead, "And I'm not letting this psycho out of my sight."

"Yeah?" Dante sneered, "You're lucky you're so busted up right now, because otherwise…"

"Both of you, please, calm down…"

From the far end of the church, Christabella's voice boomed, "See how the evil ones behave, my children? Killing the innocent and even turning on each other once they …"

"SHUT UP!" Lady, Dante and Cybil roared as one.

Sharon tugged again on Dante's hand and he reluctantly abandoned trading glares with the cop.

"Please, mister, my mommy needs help…"

Dante tried to remember how his mom talked to him when he was young, and crouched down to the girl's level.

"Ok, yeah. I just gotta know how to find her first …"

"She's at the hospital, Brookhaven Hospital, in the basement," Lady explained, desperately trying to get things back on track. "I'll draw a map…"

"He's not going anywhere…" Cybil spat.

"Well you ain't going after her," Lady dug out a notepad and started scribbling, "And I don't really have enough ammo for a round trip. He'll come back."

Lady tore out the page and smacked it into Dante's chest.

"When you get back," she whispered, "We're going to have a long, LONG, talk…"

Dante took the map.

"Listen, these people, they're all…"

"Don't," Lady gritted, "Don't try to rationalize it. Not right now. Just go rescue the kid's mom."

Dante looked down at his newest (and seemingly only) fan, and tried to grin all friendly-like.

"I'm, um, gonna need my hand to find your mom. Ok? This is my best friend, Lady," Dante met his partner's eyes but she glanced away. Dante sighed, but kept going, "She'll take care of you until I bring back your mom."

Sharon nodded and reluctantly relaxed her grip as Dante handed her over to Lady, who just turned her back and led the little girl away. Gritting his teeth, he turned away as well and headed out.

The cop snarled at him as he went past.

"This isn't over. Freak."

Dante just flipped her off without breaking stride.

"And my luck with women continues," he muttered as he headed out into the fog.

---

Once outside he pulled out the map, scanned it, looked around himself, furrowed his brow … then flipped the sheet of paper over. He peered at it for another minute and, moving his lips as he read, he turned all the way around once pointing in different directions with his finger. Finally he flipped the map back the way he'd first had it.

"Good thing I finished sixth grade," he grinned.

He loped easily through the empty streets towards the hospital. The map helped some, but mostly he could just follow his "nose," or whatever sense it was that clued him in to evil. He covered the distance far faster than Lady had when she was helping the injured cop.

It was exactly as Lady had described, but then a rundown hospital was hard to mistake. Inside, he followed the tracks in the dust left by the cultists on their earlier visit until he found the elevator shaft. He wedged Rebellion between the doors, gripped them with both hands and smashed them all the way open, destroying whatever spring mechanism had held them shut all these years. Then he simply stepped into the empty shaft.

After far too much time passed in freefall he realized this hole was waaaay deeper than Lady had written down. Not that he was worried about the landing -- he was just getting bored.

The elevator stranded at the bottom had its roof blast open as a scarlet missile smashed through it. Dante brushed himself off, and pried open the doors with his fingers.

"First floor! Buckets, bolts, carbuncles, uh, hardware, and ladies lingerie!" He paused, and then snickered at that last one – he hadn't even meant it like that. Good thing she wasn't around to hear him, he thought.

Then he remembered how pissed she was at him, and the good mood faded. Hurt and angry again, he followed the written instructions to find room whatever where this Da Silva chick was supposed to be going. Rounding the first corner he ran into a pleasant surprise.

"Helllloooo nurse!" He surveyed a flock of well-stacked hunnies in tight nurse uniforms and…

Ew. Scars, puckered dead flesh, bandage-wrapped faces, and the spastic body language of your average reanimated corpse. Waving scalpels, saws and other unpleasant medical instruments, they advanced towards the sound of his voice.

"Uh, on second thought …. Goodbye, nurse," he drew Ebony and Ivory and spun them. "Heheh. Time to go to work, guys."

A minute and a half later he propped a foot on the tallest pile of corpses and consulted the map again to refresh his memory. When something grabbed his other leg, he kept studying the map as he pulled out Ebony with his free hand and blasted out the zombie's brains.

He finally found the room he was looking for, and a pale unearthly light shone flickering under the door. Putting his ear to the door he could hear a little girl's voice, exactly like Sharon's, droning on and on and on … and on. About … something.

Dante stepped back and scowled in confusion.

"What, are they having some kind of emo spoken-word performance in there?" He shrugged, "Well come to think of it, this place _is_ a suburb of Hell …"

With that he drew his guns, lifted his foot, and smashed the door off its hinges and into the room.

---

"We're going to throw the book at your boyfriend, you know," Cybil fumed from her seat in the front pew, cradling Lady's TEC-9 and surveying the cultists.

"He's NOT my boyfriend," Lady blurted, sounding a little too defensive even to herself, "And besides … He must have had a reason. I've never seen him …"

"You even told me before, he's like half devil, demon, whatever. And I've never seen a human do what he did … move like that, I mean," Cybil shifted her weight on the hard wooden seat. "Cripes, he probably drinks human blood."

"That's just vampires. His father was Sparda," Lady announced, with some little pride. "That should say something."

"Pffft! Man, you actually believe that old myth?" Cybil snorted. "You're not nearly as smart as I first thought."

"I have my reasons," Lady stroked Sharon's hair as she lay sleeping in her lap.

"And even if it's true, so what? Maybe his old man was some kind of hero or something, but he was still a demon. That's no guarantee his kid's gonna grow up decent."

Lady opened her mouth to respond, but then she remembered Vergil, Dante's twin. He had in fact not grown up to be heroic at all. She still wasn't entirely sure what Vergil's ultimate goals had been, but protecting humans hadn't seemed to be on the list.

"Ok, true," she conceded, "But this one did. I'm sure of it."

But she didn't sound too convinced.

"I really didn't think you were the type," Cybil sighed with some disappointment. "Live and learn."

"Huh?"

"Just another stupid girl tangled up with some creep, constantly making excuses for him …"

"You should listen to your friend, sweetie …" Christabella piped up.

"SHUT UP!" Cybil and Lady barked.

---

"Son of a traitor. Son of a whore," the duplicate Sharon spat.

"You know, you were a lot more likeable back at the church," Dante mused as he pressed Ebony's muzzle to the girl's forehead.

"PLEASE! Please," Rose begged, "Don't kill her! She's…"

"This ain't your daughter, babe."

"I know…"

"She knows, bitchspawn."

"Oh the _mouth_ on you," Dante cocked Ebony's hammer. Over his shoulder, he addressed the pretty blonde woman, "You're Rose, right? Care to explain what the hell's going on here?"

"Well," Rose surveyed the decaying hospital room and its other occupants, the disabled mute nurse, the severe burn victim lying in the bed … "I have to admit I'm still kind of confused myself…"

"I was making everything clear," not-Sharon snarled, "Until this son of a cow…"

Dante pressed harder with Ebony, forcing the girl back against the wall.

"Listen, you want to insult me or my dad, fine, whatever. Won't change the outcome any. Just leave my mom out of it, _capiche_?"

The little girl smiled sweetly.

"Mother is God in the eyes of a child…"

"Huh?"

"She said that before," Rose interjected, then gestured at the bed, "This is Alessa, Sharon's re … Sharon's birth mother."

"Ohhhhhh," Dante exclaimed, "Now it all makes sense."

"Really?" asked Rose hopefully.

"Not in the slightest. And little Miss Pottymouth here is…"

_"I AM THE REAPER,"_ the girl-creature announced in an inhuman voice.

"Neat trick," Dante scoffed, "Well, I'm the reaper … uh, reaper. Whatever. Anyhow, I butcher five of you fucks before I even take my morning dump."

_"NOT LIKE ME," _the thing proclaimed smugly.

"Cool, maybe you'll be a challenge," he addressed Rose again, "Why is it, exactly, that I can't just kill this thing?"

"I am here because Alessa summoned me," the demon said, using Sharon's voice again. "Only when her pain is repaid in full will this town be released…"

Dante looked to the bed's occupant.

"Revenge, huh? And you really are a witch, aintcha?" Dante cocked his head, "So now you've used your own daughter, tormented the hell out of both her and the people who were nice enough to raise her, just to get back at those pansies in the church?"

His look turned to a glare.

"Kind of a selfish 'God,' aintcha. _Mom_?"

The eyes of the woman in the bed were unreadable.

"That's right," said Rose, realization dawning, turning to Alessa, "It was you. You've done all this to Sharon and to me, it's all your doing. And you wanted me to _help_ you?"

Alessa had no way to respond.

"Help her? How?" Dante asked.

"I _think_," Rose ventured, and pointed at 'the reaper,' "She wanted me to help that … thing… do something in the church."

"Oh." Dante withdrew and holstered Ebony, "Well that's no problem."

---

Lady decided one more time to try to have a pleasant conversation with Cybil.

"So," she gestured over their heads, "What do you figure the big ladders are for?"

Cybil looked to the structures looming above.

"Beats me," then she looked towards the half-filled firepit placed between the ladders. "Kinda looks like …"

KA-SLAM

Everyone jumped at the sound of the doors bursting open. Lady turned to see Dante posing in the entrance, grinning like a loon.

"Man, this joint is dead! Let's liven it up a bit, shall we?"

Behind him a shapely blond in a tattered gray outfit and knee-high boots cautiously stepped forward.

"MOMMY!"

Sharon leapt from Lady's lap and sped to the woman who scooped her up and spun her around in profound joy and relief. Lady teared up, and Cybil clapped and gave a hearty "Whoo!"

Proud as a muster of peacocks, grinning ear-to-ear, Dante marched up to Lady. Despite her current misgivings, she was still thrilled to see him.

He leaned in as if to give her a kiss, and instead whispered intently.

"Get them and the cop out of here. Right the fuck now."

She pulled back to stare at him in confusion. He kept his grin but his eyes held a far different message.

"Right now."

Still unsure, she stared back. Her eyes full of a hundred questions. Dante tried to grin reassuringly, but it took effort.

"It's not… it's not what I think you think. At least, I think it's not what I …" he gave a wry smirk. "Anyhow, you've trusted me before. Trust me now."

Lady made her choice, nodded, and scrambled to her feet, grabbing equipment as she went, while Dante turned to stand before the cultists. Lady hauled Cybil to her feet, who was still too happy and relieved to protest or even notice when Lady smoothly reclaimed the TEC-9. Halfway to the door, Rose and Sharon came to help with Cybil, further distracting her. It wasn't until Lady was pulling the doors closed and exchanging a concerned look with Dante that Cybil's other concerns resurfaced.

"Hey. HEY! What the hell…"

But she was cut off by the closing of the doors.

"Hi there, folks," Dante turned to the throng, pulled Rebellion from his back and held it before him, "There's something I want to show you."

The cultists crawled away from him in blind terror, Christabella dropped to her knees and began chanting something inane. Dante raised his sword …

---

The sounds of human screams leaking out of the church further enraged Cybil. Lady leaned her head against the doors, taking it all in, praying to whatever good entities there were that she had made the right choice…

"What is going on in there?!" Still barely able to move from where she lay, Cybil clawed at Lady's boot like a caged animal. "_What have you done?!_"

"What needs to be done," Rose said quietly, cradling Sharon like she would never let go.

Cybil gaped at her in shock.

"Rose? What the hell? They might be vicious scum, but they're still _people_…"

"No," Rose said quietly, "No they're not. They haven't been for a long time now…"

Lady snapped out of her immobilizing guilt to stare at Rose. Cybil went from rage to … confused rage.

"What the fu… what?"

"You mean," Lady ventured, "they're just more evil spirits? Ghosts?"

Rose nodded.

Lady collapsed to the ground, shaking in relief, trying to forget what she almost thought she just did.

Cybil sat silent processing this, remembering all the things she'd seen since she got here, what she'd learned of Rose's nature. She realized it made perfect, insane, sense.

She looked up to Rose.

"We should get away from the doors then," she nodded at Sharon and made air quotes, "_We_ don't need to hear this."

Rose nodded and stood, carrying Sharon. Lady, once again mute, dragged herself to her feet and boosted Cybil up. Together, the three women trudged down the steps and across the graveyard to wait.

---

Inside, all Dante had done was give himself a nasty cut on his fingertip. A few drops of his blood leaked out onto the floor, though the wound healed almost instantly.

Then he calmly headed for the back row of pews as the Earth opened up behind him. And that was when the screaming had really started.

Later, as the blood of the last cultist sprayed the walls and the chunks of their body fell to the floor and faded back into the ether, Dante stood up from his seat and gave a sarcastic golf clap.

The Alessa/Reaper's voice rippled through the air though her mouth did not move.

"You enjoyed that, did you?" It boomed.

"Very nice," clap, clap, clap, "Yeah. You're real 'tough' when it comes to masses of unarmed idiots in a confined space."

He paused, studying the forest of blood-dripping barbed wire tentacles writhing in the air above him.

"And, damn, looks like you worked out some real, like, rape issues with that Portabella chick. It's the 21st century now you know. It's OK to be 'out.'"

The thing that had once been an elementary schoolgirl chuckled.

"Would you like the same treatment then, slut's son?"

"Oh, so you're bi? Well sorry, you're not exactly what I'd call a 'MILF,'" He walked right up what remained of the center aisle, straight into the nest of curling, snapping wires, "And you're still trying to push my 'mom' button, huh? FYI, you're trying too hard with the taunts now, and it's getting pathetic."

With that, he reached behind himself into whatever place his weapons came from, and pulled out … a glowing purple guitar.

"It is not our fault," Alessa/Reaper boomed, "That your coward of a father mated only with whores who he beat mercilessly."

A pulsing shriek and a wave of light burst from the guitar, surprising even Dante.

"He was a perfect gentleman!" the guitar seemed to wail, "You skanky bitch!"

Dante's eyebrows shot up, as he tried to hold the guitar still.

"Damn, you seem to have really pissed off my friend here," He gave Nevan a decisive strum and a shockwave of sound radiated outward, knocking away the encroaching tentacles.

"And now…" he played a blazing lick on Nevan, and a furious cloud of bats crackling with electric arcs formed around him then shot away to send thousands of volts along the wires supporting the hospital bed above, where the possessed and insane Alessa was bound. She screamed in agony, both with her disembodied reaper voice and physically through whatever scars had sealed off her mouth years ago.

"Yup, that's what I thought," Dante plucked a few more notes out of Nevan warming up, eliciting more howls of pain from his "audience."

"Hmm. How did that one Dethklok tune go? Think it was called, 'Crush my Battle Opponents Balls,'" he strummed, Alessa screamed, "I know you might not have actual balls, but I think we can show you what it might feel like to have them crushed…"

Strum. Scream.

"Alrighty then… a one-two-three-four…"

Across the graveyard, Dante's companions were forced to flee to the other side of the street and into the ruins of a bakery to escape the horrific cries that echoed through the town.

---

As the last of the screams peaked and abruptly stopped, something truly strange happened. Looking up from the table where the group sat, Lady was at first confused by the bright light that poured in through the windows.

"It's the sun," she realized. "He did it."

There were grins all around.

"Can we go home now, mommy?" Sharon asked, "I want to see daddy."

Rose planted a kiss on her daughter's forehead.

"Yes, sweetie. I do too."

"Yeah, um," Lady grinned, scratching the back of her head, "He was the one who hired us to find you…"

Sensing Lady's embarrassment, Rose patted her hand.

"Whatever he promised you, you've earned it."

A loud crash from across the graveyard made them all jump, until they saw a scarlet figure stride out of the dark church and stretch his arms in the sun.

"Oh!" Sharon piped up and jumped from the booth, "I have to go thank mister… um…"

"Dante," said Lady, and she watched the girl sprint out the door.

THE END 

© 2007 Rob Myers


	5. Dramatis Personae

**Dramatis Personae**, for those unfamiliar with _"Devil May Cry"_ or _"Silent Hill"_:

**Dante:** Our hero. He is a tall, physically fit and charismatic young man of 20 with ice-blue eyes and a mop of naturally snow-colored hair. He wears a long red leather coat, matching waistcoat and pants, and motorcycle boots - an outfit he chose partly for durability, but mostly for style. He's half Italian (on his mother's side) and half demon-from-Hell (on his father's), and grew up in the U.S. His father was the enigmatic Legendary Dark Knight Sparda, a warrior demon who served the underworld until a change of heart prompted him to side with humanity. Dante has passionately hated full demons since they killed his mother, but he follows in his father's footsteps reluctantly -- mostly to seek revenge and for thrills -- and seems to care little for anything else. He operates a demon-hunting agency called "Devil May Cry" with his partner.

**Lady:** Dante's partner, and the one who coined the phrase "Devil May Cry." She is a very pretty young woman a little older than Dante who shows off her trim and athletic figure in a white Kevlar catsuit accessorized with many guns. She has short brown hair, a barely-visible scar across the bridge of her nose, mismatched brown and blue eyes, and a painful history. Her father was seduced by evil and slew her mother as part of a ceremony to become a full demon. To stop him, Lady trained herself strenuously in firearms and combat techniques until she became the equal of any group of lesser demons in battle. She fights to defend innocents from evil in whatever form it comes.

**Officer Cybil Bennett:** A no-nonsense, courageous and slightly cynical motorcycle cop with short blond hair who keeps herself in top physical condition. She comes from Braham, the town closest to Silent Hill, and pursued the Da Silvas into the ghost town when Rose's bizarre behavior made Officer Bennett suspect abuse. Now she too is missing.

**Sharon Da Silva:** The 12-year-old adoptive daughter of Rose and Christopher Da Silva, she has long brown hair and haunting eyes. Normally a bright and intelligent child, she has recently been subjected to night terrors and sleepwalking, which have made her sullen, sometimes irrationally violent, and increasingly withdrawn.

**Rose Da Silva:** An attractive blond woman in her early 30s, she is the adoptive mother of Sharon, and would do anything for her child. In an effort to get to the bottom of Sharon's mood swings, nightmares and sleepwalking, Rose brought her to Silent Hill, a West Virginia ghost town somehow connected to the girl's past. But now the pair have gone missing.

**Silent Hill:** A mining town in West Virginia which was abandoned 20 years ago when an underground mine fire got out of control -- a blaze which continues to this day. The town has had a reputation for strange and disturbing events going back to colonial days, and is still the subject of whispered dread among those who live in nearby Braham.


End file.
